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The Story of Sustainable Design By Adital Ela

So what exactly does “sustainable design” mean? What is this weird term which makes any sensible person frown whenever I answer the question “What do you do for a living?” This puzzled look, which appears on the faces of people from various professional backgrounds, is as common among designers, who lacking opportunity for a more thoroughexamination, are constantly exposed to a wide variety of design projects which are all titled “design for sustainability.” The term has recently become a buzzword and might instantly become devoid of meaning if we don’t take a minute to define its essence and aspirations.

Some Context Sustainability is quite a new term which emerged in 1987 due to the Brundtland Commission Report (Our Common Future)that alerted the world to the urgency of making progress toward economic development without exhausting Earth’s natural resources or causing irreversible damage to the environment. The Commission defined sustainable development as development that can be maintained unaltered for a long period of time since it does not harm the base of resources it feeds on, and as a way of development which meets theneeds of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The term sustainable design was derived directly from this term and the concept behind it is identical. Following the Brundtland Commission Report, the Earth Summit - the United Nations world summit Conference – assembled in 1992 to discuss the disturbing symptoms of environmentaldeterioration. Representatives of 170 nations committed to the paradigm of sustainable development and signed Agenda 21 – a blueprint for a comprehensive environmental policy which is implemented today both internationally and locally. In addition, the Agenda further determines environmental goals and development policies of countries and cities worldwide. The last world summit dedicated toenvironmental issues was the Bali Conference held last December. It achieved an international agreement (referring to the UN scientists’ recommendations for reforms), according to which by 2050, all the world’s nations should reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50%.

The Bali Summit actually marked the beginning of negotiations for a new treaty to be signed at a convention in Copenhagen in 2009. Thisfuture treaty would force us all to re-examine the way we produce, consume and conduct ourselves in all aspects of life.

So What has Design Got to Do with It All? Examining the world’s population growth and rise in quality of life will bring us to the conclusion that if the whole world’s population had shared the Western living standards, we would have needed at least five planets in order tosatisfy our needs. Since we have, for now at least, only one planet –yet we are consuming its capital account rather than living off the interest - designers are called upon to explore, invent and develop new ways which would be five times more efficient for living and thriving on Earth. Throughout the first decade since the term Sustainability has first risen into consciousness, the majority ofdesigners have been focusing on strategies of “green design” or Ecodesign, which aim at minimizing the environmental burdens of a product by using a set of considerations such as clever efficient structures, a conscious choice of materials, optimized production processes and concern for the product’s afterlife. The classical model of Sustainable Design is based on the triple bottom line: People,Planet, Profit, incorporating considerations of minimizing the product’s environmental burdens with additional concerns for economic validity and balance as well as a set of social aspects. These aspects are based on values of ethical and social justice, such as equal distribution of resources and opportunities between people of different backgrounds and between us and the future generations, fair...